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Topic: ARS reviews Linux Gnome 3.0 (Read 3132 times)

The new version also represents a major architectural overhaul, with many important enhancements to the GNOME platform's technical underpinnings.But it's not all good news: The new GNOME Shell is built largely with the Clutter drawing toolkit and depends on composited rendering to function properly. If you don't have compatible graphics hardware or drivers, you won't get to run the new shell. It will instead punt you back to a more conventional 2.x-style desktop with regular GNOME panels.

GNOME 3, codename "Pointless waste of space". What's up with the humongous widgets and the insane amount of wasted space in the different windows? Is everyone in the GNOME team using 30" monitors or what? I hope the different Linux distros will come up with sane themes, because I should not be using XFCE just to avoid this horror.

I wonder if the new app launcher will be competing with GNOME Do in terms of features and extensibility?

As I have previously stated, the general configurability of the desktop has been broadly crippled. You can't change your widget or window manager theme, set a screensaver, or adjust any of the interface colors. Shockingly, even font configuration appears to have been removed. I couldn't find a way to change the default interface font sizes in GNOME 3.0.

Though if you look at the screenshots at full resolution, the font size seems big enough to me.

The article makes it sound as though GNOME 3.0 is super stable and ready to go, so it makes me wonder if Ubuntu will be using it in their eminent Ubuntu 11.4 release...

Hoping Tuxman or 40hz has some play time with one of their distros this month to try it out.

Got it on the schedule. Although at the rate I'm going it will probably be around mid-May before I can really sit down and give it some serious attention. In the meantime, I'm hoping some of the limitations the ArsTechnica article mentioned are only temporary issues that will get resolved by the time I load it up. Gnome lets you do little enough to customize it already.

Been using Xfce since 3.something.Never looked back, and I keep finding good reasons why...

+1! I prefer a lighter desktop myself. But that was thanks to #! (CrunchBang ) and their choice of Openbox for their default desktop. The fact that much of my personal tech is also showing signs of age could also have a lot to do with it.

#! has an XFCE version as well. But after using both for a while, I find myself with a 'slight but definite' preference for Openbox. Which seems to suggest it's not so much which desktop manager gets used as it does how well it's been implemented and tweaked for a specific distro.

Not to say you couldn't do all of that yourself from scratch. (This is Linux after all!) But that's a huge amount of work, so it's a much better strategy to find something that meets your needs 90% of the way and customize from there.

The article makes it sound as though GNOME 3.0 is super stable and ready to go, so it makes me wonder if Ubuntu will be using it in their eminent Ubuntu 11.4 release..

It will likely be in their repositories. But last I heard, Shuttleworth & Co, are totally committed to using Unity as the default desktop starting with release 11.4, aka Natty Numnutz Narwhal.

Most people outside Canonical seem to think this is a 'very bad' idea.

Unity looks very much like GNOME 3.0 to me. At least from screenshots and videos alone, they seem very similar to me.

Hope not! I tried Unity and didn't like it at all. I really thought they crossed the line between "simplified" and "dumbed-down" in its current version.

If I want to ride a training-wheel equipped bicycle while handcuffed and wearing a straitjacket I can always buy something from Apple. At least that way I'll get bragging rights with the Cappuccino Computing Cabal that hogs the tables over at my local Barnes & Noble.